What is truly odd about this case is that it strays into so many areas of contemporary intolerance – those areas where any reasonable discussion attracts a stream of insults, anger, and reactions from the world public. We have seen much of this type of scandal before in various forms: rape, murder, assault, assault, child abuse, etc. You name it and we have lived it and the usually reoccur in every decade or so. In modern culture, news sells big. And scandals, except war, disaster and those news that the media chooses to make bigger. Just open an American newspaper, turn on the radio or the television and it's impossible to avoid learning about some successful person caught with their pants down in at least one of the media outlets at any point in time. Meanwhile, Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other sources on the internet throb with gossip and innuendo (everyone loves a good mystery) surrounding the privacy injunctions obtained by famous men to prevent their families, fans, and sponsors from hearing about their down-market taste in floozies. Now we have activists in the mix, especially women organizations who despise the uncontrollable lots of randy men. All of those elements in place, now we are throwing race in the mix, and better yet -- classism, geopolitics, the Islamic attitude to the West, conspiracy theories, eurocrat, NYPD, French culture, and Americanism. It can’t get bigger than this instance of rape allegation from an immigrant working class Lady of African descent to a mighty eurocrat of European descent in the United States of America. Let’s begin to analyze why this case is special.
